prepared for you the path that you might follow me—
Plautius jerked his head up, startled by a racket outside, then looked back down at the document in his hand. Instantly he thought of his two brothers and their mother's grief. This testimonial was not about death but life, and he wasn't about to destroy a writing with such promise. Turning it over to his centurion would be disastrous. There was much more to be read, but other soldiers would soon overtake him. Sweeping aside the sagum, his old military cape, he rolled the document and slipped it under his metal breastplate. Hurrying back to the interior patio, he turned and strode to the front of the house.
Although he had no idea what had happened, something had touched him in that bedroom. Maybe these Christianios were just another cult drifting through Rome. Maybe not. He would study this piece of papyrus carefully.
Walking out onto the street, Plautius watched the soldiers rush back and forth from house to house, carrying their torches high and herding citizens to the race track for examination. The locals would be irate at such rough treatment, and they might have a hard time proving they weren't believers. It wasn't fair, but there wasn't much in Rome that was.
Part One
Night Falls
1
September 1, 2008
Murky shadows spread down the streets of Rome and darkened the narrow lanes winding through ancient thoroughfares. A heavyset man in a trench coat trotted down the steps of La Metropolitana, the metro system, not far from the Fontana di Trevi. When he turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs, the smell of hot pizza offered by a vendor near the metro entrance slowed him, but he didn't stop.
The fountains always attracted a bevy of tourists with cameras flashing like machine guns. They fluttered around the statue of Neptune in his shell-shaped chariot surrounded by a court of seahorses and giant tritons. Cold had already permeated the stone. The stout man walked at a quick clip as if he could distance himself from the chill of the evening. The press of late-night tourists strolling through the quaint streets only helped cover his movements.
A few people milled around the platform, looking indifferent. Leaning against the back wall, oblivious to the crowd, a young man stood locked in an embrace with a black-haired Italian woman. No one looked at them for more than a few seconds.
A rush of air surged out of the murky tunnel and signaled the arrival of the train. The roar of steel wheels clattered against the rails and telegraphed that the speeding vehicle would stop in a matter of moments. Waiting until the last second, the heavyset man jumped into the coach just before the train left the station and settled into a seat at the rear.
At this hour, there weren't many people traveling in his direction—only those who had worked hard all day. The men wore pullover long-sleeved jerseys underneath worn sport coats; tired women in wrinkled dresses paid no attention to him.
A surge of anxiety swept over him when he realized that his hands were sweating. Beads of perspiration popped up on his forehead. Never had he done anything like he planned. His face appeared calm, but his stomach churned. He gnawed at his bottom lip.
All the trains stopped running around 1:30 a.m., but that should give him plenty of time to set up in the tunnel just outside of the termini in the Piazza dei Cinquecento. Without moving his head, his eyes roamed around the car to make sure the police hadn't followed him.
He thought about Rome and how it had pushed the present moment into the tiny cracks left from three thousand years of history. It was a tight fit, particularly when the objective was to destroy a portion of the city. He remembered reading a historian who called Rome a palimpsest: a piece of parchment used again and again with the present day squeezed between the lines or written over the top of the faded original. Yet, the city really wasn't so hard to decipher. Central Rome was contained in only two and a half miles from the Basilica de San Pietro to the termini station as the crow flies, but for three millennia an entire world had been crammed into the small space.
The train suddenly lurched back and forth, jolting his body. Gingerly, he ran his hand down the side of his coat, feeling with a tender touch. Too much was at stake to risk an